I thank my friend LexKixAss for letting me abscond her twins for my story. As always Naruto belongs to Kishimoto. Please review.
Hinata and Neji waited eagerly at the gate to the Hyuuga compound, their matching eyes scouring the nearby roads for the approach of their targets. At nine, Neji was technically allowed out of the compound by himself (given he told them where he was going and how long he'd be gone and made sure to get home by then), but Hinata –being heir to the clan– was still restricted to escorted leave only. So when it came to whether or not to run ahead and find their intended targets, Neji decided to stay with Hinata.
"When are they going to be done?" she whined, her lithe body bouncing on the soles of her feet.
"Maybe they failed and they're too ashamed to face everyone," Neji snickered and received a playful push from his sister-cousin.
"Nuh-uh," Hinata answered childishly enough to earn an amused glance from the two Hyuuga guards stationed at the gate. "I bet they're trying to find two forehead protectors that are completely identical so people won't have an easy way to tell them apart."
Neji snorted. "They would do that."
Hinata grabbed Neji's sleeve and pointed excitedly to the two young figures sauntering around the corner and into view. Though the rest of the academy had let out nearly an hour prior, Osamu and Isamu had stayed late and now proudly brandished the rewards of their efforts across their foreheads. Two identical pieces of metal, polished until the evening sun glistened off in a rainbow of colors, bore the symbol of Konoha like a badge of honor.
Hinata looked up at the two guards with a pleading expression on her cute face until one sighed and nodded. "Go on."
"Thank you!" she called back as she and Neji bolted to meet the twins halfway down the street. The guards kept a respectful, but watchful, eye on her from their place at the gate.
"Guess who're genin now," the twin on the left said smugly.
Hinata very nearly crashed into the twin on the right, giving him a big hug before gazing admiringly at the forehead protector he wore. "Congratulations, Isamu-kun, Osamu-kun."
Osamu sighed and pulled off his forehead protector for Neji to examine. "Otouto, I think we may be found out completely. Neji-kun and Hinata-sama have gotten us right for nearly a month now. We must have a tell somewhere."
"Don't look at me," Isamu replied, squatting down enough to let Hinata trace the Konoha symbol carved into his forehead protector, "you're the oldest."
"So because I'm two minutes older I'm giving us away?" Osamu questioned sarcastically, and Isamu nodded.
"It makes you the responsible one, and that means you're responsible even if it's my fault."
Osamu smacked his brother upside the head and received a shot at the shin in return. If they both weren't laughing, it'd have been annoying.
"So, Hinata-sama," Isamu said, diverting the conversation with ease, "do you know what it means for us to be genin?"
"It means you get teams," Neji answered for her and got matching tongues stuck out at him.
"It means you won't be going to the academy anymore," Hinata answered, a little more pout in her voice than Neji had.
Isamu shook his head. "It means–"
"If Aunt Naomi keeps her word," Osamu interrupted.
"Yeah, if Aunt Naomi keeps her word, it means we can be your escorts out of the compound." Isamu's grin threatened to blind them it was so bright. "No more Ko or any one else to tell you where to go and ruin all our fun."
"Of course," Osamu huffed, puffing out his chest a little, "that's when we're not out on missions. You know, protecting the village and stuff."
"But we'll take you out to celebrate before we go on any missions and let you get a real taste of the village," Isamu assured her.
"Speaking of celebrating," Osamu drawled as he ushered everyone back toward the compound gate, "Mom promised we could have a party-ish type thing if we became genin."
"Party-ish since it'll mainly be family and stuff," Isamu explained, and Osamu shoved him for interrupting.
"Right, so you both better make sure Aunt Naomi and Hizashi-sama lets you come. We'll be mad at you for at least three weeks if you miss it. It'll be tomorrow night around dinner time."
"Mom said she'd talk to Aunt Naomi, but if she forgets it's up to you two." Isamu mussed both Hinata and Neji's hair. "It won't be as fun without our favorite cousin or Hinata-sama to mess with."
Neji smoothed back his hair –he never understood why they loved to screw up his hair– but nodded to the two older boys. (He'd let it pass today since they were genin now.) "Don't worry, I'm sure Mom'll let us come."
"She better," Osamu insisted with a smile, "what's the fun of being genin if we can't brag about it to everyone in the clan."
Hinata wrinkled up her nose at her aunt, who'd insisted that she hold her hand the entire way to the branch house. She was eight now and had been to the branch house before without needing to be walked the whole way. Sure, she'd never actually been into someone's house before, normally her trips to the branch house were to the pond or somewhere close to it where she played or trained with Neji and the twins, but really, holding Naomi's hand? That was too childish even for Hinata. Neji didn't have to hold her hand.
It was a little strange for Hinata to be in the residential area of the branch house, though. It felt so different from the main house where everything was connected (meeting rooms, training grounds, dining halls) and a part of her home. Here it was more like in the village: individual homes next to each other with communal areas for training and a large meeting hall located near the division between the main and branch sections of the compound. She'd rarely saw the clan in their everyday lives either. She saw them plenty at the main house, as servants and messengers or meeting with her uncle, but to see them pulling clothes off the clothesline or milling about on their porches . . . that wasn't always how she pictured the clan.
Naomi pointed to a house on their left and smiled. "That's where we lived before we came to the main house."
"It looks like all the rest," Hinata commented, slightly confused. She always figured they'd had a house more like hers since Hizashi was her uncle, yet that house looked just as ordinary and average as the others they'd passed.
Naomi chuckled, but a slip of sadness betrayed her mirth. "Hinata, we're branch. We all have houses like that. Only the main family gets to live in such a big, fancy place."
"Why?" Hinata asked.
"It's just the way things are," Naomi answered in a rush. She quickly pointed to another house a couple down the road. "That's Osamu-kun and Isamu-kun's house."
"Mom, can we go ahead?" Neji asked, swinging around to give his mother a huge, unconvincingly innocent grin. Hinata followed suit. "Please."
Naomi dashed their hopes with a shake of her head. "No, I'll be walking Hinata to the door. And don't get all pouty on me, we're almost there. And don't you dare roll your eyes or I'll send you back home."
Neji stopped before his eyes went all the way back and whistled to the sky. "What? I was just looking at the clouds. They're fluffy today."
"Sure you were." Naomi raised an eyebrow at Neji, but a smile was threatening to break through.
Hinata tugged and pulled until her aunt was jogging to the house, laughing the whole time. She couldn't wait to see the twins and hear about their team and all the amazing things they'd get to do now that they were genin. (And Naomi had even agreed to keep her promise and let the twins take her out by themselves, so long as she was told whenever they left the compound.)
She was bobbing up and down as Naomi knocked on the door, but stayed half-hidden behind Naomi and Neji. As excited as she was, this was the first time she was going to be entering someone else's house and Hinata wasn't sure what to expect. It didn't help that she'd only see the twins' parents a couple times, and they'd never really talked to her as much as yelled for Osamu and Isamu to come home and do their chores.
A woman about the same age as Naomi answered the door. She was fairly pretty and Hinata recognized her immediately as the twins' mother. She looked like a female version of them, or they a male version of her. It must have been how she could so easily tell them apart. According to Osamu and Isamu, the only person who could tell them apart with 100% accuracy (so far) was their mother. Neji and Hinata were a close second, though they still messed up every once in a while.
"Naomi," the woman welcomed, a tired smile brightening her melancholy face just a little.
"Good to see you, Ren," Naomi returned and stepped up to give the woman a hug.
"You have no idea how glad I am you're here" Ren sighed. "Maybe the boys will cheer up now that Neji-kun and Hinata-sama are here."
"Cheer up?" Naomi questioned for all three as Ren moved away to let them in.
The house was comfortably furnished and there was a very casual feeling to the sitting room they entered. It reminded Hinata of the twins, put together but welcoming. The atmosphere wasn't what she was expecting though. Adults stood around talking in low whispers, some snacking from a small table of food set out for guests. It didn't feel like a party at all, especially not one the twins would throw. It felt more like the gathering after her mother's funeral.
Ren motioned to tuck her hair behind her ear, but nothing needed to be tucked. "I was afraid this was going to happen, but the boys refused to even considered it. They're on separate teams."
Hinata tried to imagine the twins not being together and her head started to hurt in the attempt. Osamu and Isamu were always together. For them to be separated . . . that just seemed weird.
"Neji-kun, Hinata-sama, why don't you both go in and try and cheer the boys up?" Ren suggested, waving them off to a room in the back. "They've been sulking in the dining room since they got home."
Neji grabbed her hand and led the way into the dining room with ease; he'd been to the twins' home before. There, sitting closer than they usually did, Osamu and Isamu glared at the table as if they could set it on fire with just the force of their anger. Hinata had never seen them when they weren't being playful and joking around. The sour expressions dragging down their identical faces felt wrong.
There were a couple other branch kids standing around with food and looking bored, but for once the twins ignored everyone. The life of the party had been squashed flat and now sat dejected and defeated. They looked up when Neji and Hinata entered the room, but the smile that attempted to greet them didn't make it further than a barely visible twitch of their lips.
"Hey," Neji called to them both as he ushered Hinata to the open seat next to Isamu. "So we heard you're on different teams."
"How could they do that to us?" Osamu blurt out, not really paying attention to Neji at all. "We work best together. You'd think they wouldn't want to handicap us like this."
"Is it really going to be that bad?" Hinata asked.
Isamu nodded his head. "Everything the clan likes to talk about us, being so good at reading people, it's because Aniki and I are together. What he doesn't see I do, and what I miss Aniki catches. You take one of us away and it's not the same. We're not as good."
"Even alone you're still better than most Hyuugas at reading people, you just won't be almost perfect at it anymore," Neji tried to console his cousins, but they refused to be comforted.
"We don't want to be separated," Isamu snapped.
"You don't cut off your right hand because it might be useful to someone else. That's why they're doing. They're taking half of us away."
"Oh please, you're on different teams, just deal with it already," huffed one of the other branch boys as he rolled his eyes at the twins. "Stop being such spoiled mainers."
Hinata looked to Neji for an explanation. She didn't understand what the boy meant by 'a spoiled mainer', but she recognized the voice he said it in. He said it the same way the boys who teased her at the academy used to insult her. Neji moved forward a little and straightened up to his full height, though it still made him shorter than the other boy.
"Be careful what you say," Neji warned.
"Oh, sorry, I forgot you're a mainer now too, Neji-sama." The boy put his hands together and bowed, malice in his eyes. "Do forgive me, Neji-sama."
"I– I'm branch," Neji said, though his voice was little confused. Nearby Osamu and Isamu watched the two carefully, the anger they'd shown to the table now directed at the branch boy.
"Sure you are, Neji-sama, that's why you've been to the branch house so much these last few years." The boy's gaze flickered to the corner of his eye to sneak a peek at Hinata. "Without your little shadow, at least."
"Seriously, Nobu, we're not in the mood to listen to this crap today," Osamu scowled. He and Isamu pushed their chairs out slightly in silent warning for the boy to cease. Too bad he didn't heed it.
"Neji I get, he lives over there now, but you two are branch. Why do you tolerate the main family so much?"
"Hinata-sama is our guest," Isamu seethed, his hand fisting on the tabletop. "We invited her, so shut up about main and branch or we'll take out all our frustrations on you."
"Fine." Nobu rolled his eyes and turned away from the table back to the other branch kids who'd been observing the exchange. In a voice just loud enough to still be heard by the whole room he muttered to the others, "Have to protect the main house mouse."
Hinata didn't know what happened next, everyone moved so fast, and chakra burned so thick in the air her skin tingled. The collective glance that passed between Neji, Osmau, and Isamu was the catalyst, and the last thing Hinata was sure she saw. After that the table was in the air and two strong arms ripped her from the kitchen fray. She didn't even see the first strike.